Welcome Aboard!

ABOARD THE JOIDES RESOLUTION, EN ROUTE TO THE WILKES LAND MARGIN, ANTARCTICA– Welcome to IODP Expedition 318. It’s been nine days since we set sail from Wellington, New Zealand, charting a course for the Wilkes Land Margin, off of East Antarctica. Check out this video for an update on what we’ve been up to and to meet paleontologist Christina Riesselman.

Rob Dunbar is a globe-trotting marine geologist who studies earth’s climate history by diving in the tropics and collecting sediments in Antarctica. Concentrating on global environmental change over the past 50 to 12,000 years, Rob and his team collect samples from deep-sea corals and lake and ocean sediments and analyze their age, chemistry, and morphology for clues about air-sea interactions, tropical marine ecosystems and polar climate. He is W.M. Keck Professor of Earth Science and director of the Stanford University Stable Isotope Lab. An avid nature photographer, SCUBA-diver and teacher, Rob is reporting from East Antarctica on the Wilkes Land Expedition.